


Pandora's Box

by hotlegfryegg



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Angst, Mental Instability, Not Beta Read, angst for YEARS, by inserting herself in other peoples business, in which Sombra makes herself sad
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-07-26
Updated: 2019-07-26
Packaged: 2020-07-20 04:02:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,693
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19985770
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hotlegfryegg/pseuds/hotlegfryegg
Summary: Sombra goes looking for answers and resurrects something that probably should have stayed dead. Meanwhile, Siebren begins to lose himself in his new identity, Sigma.





	Pandora's Box

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which the author sacrifices a couple of redshirts in order to construct a premise. You're welcome!
> 
> Also, DON'T BE THAT PERSON IN GROUP PROJECTS.

“Jor, did you finish that analysis on relativity?”

“Shit, uh… no?”

“You’re shitting me, right?” The scientist’s hand squeezed around her ID badge and she snarled at the younger fellow sitting on the floor amidst a pile of large books and empty coffee cups. “It’s due tomorrow! What the hell have you been doing?”

The lab student winced, ears turning pink. “Okay look, Professor Lumen--”

“Oh of COURSE you blew me off for Ernst fucking Lumen. Just give him your fucking number, fuck his brains out, and then _do the damn report_.”

“What are you implying?!”

“God, you’re horny AND stupid. Just forget it, I’ll do the work myself.”

With that, Gerte wheeled around, slapped her badge onto the door lock and stomped her way into the laboratory. _This is total horseshit_ , she thought as she threw herself into a rolling chair and skidded down the line of desks. _Every student is this lab is either a nymphomaniac, an idiot, or both. Fuck this_. She hammered her frustration into the keyboard at the end of the room, plugging in her password and opening the archive terminal for lab with her assistant access. Yes, she now had to make up for Jorgamund’s shit time management and finish the report, but she also had her study on the Kuiper theories to write. So much for her drinking plans after hours.

“Sorry, _amiga_. Group projects are the worst.”

“What--” Gerte’s exclamation was quickly silenced to a rifle butt on the back of her head. A purple hand grabbed her by her red hair and pulled her backward off the desk, shoving the rolling chair and its now unconscious occupant into the corner. The skylight let in a breeze that ruffled her hair gently, but would not rouse her for a long while.

“You’re taking this _way_ too seriously.”

“Hurry up.” Widowmaker shoved another rolling chair towards Sombra, who caught it and sat with a tut. The frenchwoman turned to scan the room, pressing a perfectly manicured finger to her earpiece. “We’re in. I’ll be repositioning once the download starts.”

“Good. Sombra, status?” Reaper’s voice came over the comm in their ears at a higher volume than necessary, causing both women to wince (Widowmaker whipped her earpiece out with a soft yelp) and Sombra stopped to adjust his volume on her personal holoscreen.

“Better before you decided to yell right in my ear. Got a blender full of gravel? Or are you just happy to see me?”

“Sombra--” he warned.

“Yeah, yeah. Open sesame.” Somewhere across The Hague, an equipment room door slid open unprompted and a team of armed grunts pushing a dolly hustled in. “Have fun, kids. Download initiated, we should have a lovely copy of the archive in a matter of minutes.”

“No extracurriculars.”

“No promises, _jefe_ ~” Sombra singsonged, already making a separate browsing window on an adjacent monitor.

Widowmaker, having quite enough of this, launched her hook back out through the skylight. “Repositioning. _Attendez-vous pour moi_.” As the grapple reeled her away, she called down to the woman now behind her. “If you’re in trouble, you’re on your own.”

“ _Je t’aime aussi, mon amie._ ” The hacker laughed, her focus still on the screens in front of her. This was always her favourite part--she was a kid in a candy store of information, certainly some of which could be sold or leveraged. Archive trips were always fun.

Today’s target was boring documents--their new “friend” made a request to continue his research and needed any recent or classic texts on relativity, gravity, and physics as a whole. Sombra had only found any astrophysics interesting when she stole her translocator blueprints from the Overwatch petting zoo’s star resident, right from under the nose of that whiny British glitch. She would have left this trip to Reaper except for two things:

  1. Akande had been giving her the stink eye. He probably knew she had been making some new acquaintances in her spare time, and obviously didn’t care for it. She had to go back to the good girl mask.
  2. She was looking for something else, something Sigma hadn’t asked for.



Finding Sigma’s archived records was easy, and already being partially downloaded by the other drive. Unfortunately, it was--

“Two fucking TERRABYTES?? _Hijo de puta_ , what, are we torrenting horse porn on the lab computer? _Asqueroso_!”

“ _Cuida tu lenguaje, niña. Que pasa_?”

“ _Nada, jefe_. Just gonna take longer than we thought.”

“How much?”

“Give me fifteen more minutes.”

“You’ve got seven.”

“Ten and I help you fix your janky comm.”

Reaper hesitated for a moment, then sighed. “Done.”

As he barked new orders to the rest of the team, Sombra started to wade through files, desperate to find what she had been looking for. The entire system was hideously disorganized--extraneous reports peppered through irrelevant folders, a handful of documents containing near nothing as text chat logs from video conferences. The download for Talon would be long finished before her time was up (two terrabytes be damned) but what she was looking was seemingly out of reach.

Time was running out, and with it was Sombra’s patience. “Come on, come on, come on--yes?” She clicked on a folder to open a series of video files, each one longer than the last. This was the majority of that data--most were upwards of thirty minutes apiece, and totaled in almost a month of footage. “YES! Thank you, Sigma!” A separate download of a near extra terrabyte could be done almost synchronously with the archive raid. Thrilled to have found her prize, Sombra tapped a couple of keys to initialize the transfer and wheeled back from the desk. Glancing briefly over her shoulder at Gerte (who still sat limp in the corner), she popped open the security feed on her personal display.

_Shit._ “Boss, company coming for me, front door of the lab through the library.” A man in his early forties donned in the professors’ blue stripes strode up to the door, stopping to talk to Jor (who had not moved from his guilty pile of relativity books since Gerte had chewed his ear off). The audio feed was off and she couldn’t eavesdrop, but their conversation was thankfully buying her a few extra seconds to scheme. She launched herself out of her chair and grabbed Gerte by the shoulders, ready to use her as a decoy when a loud “WAIT” reached her ears through the wall.

Sombra froze. The seconds ticked past, but the door didn’t open. She flicked the camera feed back open and sure enough...

What a convenient development. “Nevermind, no backup needed. Company took care of itself.” She unceremoniously stuffed Gerte back into the chair and briskly hopped back to the computers, scanning both screens. One drive was complete, chock-full of research on everything from soup to nuts to do with astrophysics (her little friend would have a field day). But the other drive was still downloading the last of the videos, plugging away at the massive files. 96%... 97%... 98%...

“Time’s up. Status?”

“Stall.” 99.3% on her personal hub.

“Now, Sombra!”

She grit her teeth, pulling out Talon’s drive with one hand and her other firmly around her hub. “I said STALL! 30 seconds!” She bounced from the ball of one foot to the other and bit her lip. “C’mon, c’mon, come on!!”

“Ugh,” moaned Gerte.

“Done!” Sombra yelled, yanking her hub from the computer port and translocating immediately. With a rush of pixels and a small wave of nausea, she reappeared on the roof and broke into a run. “I got it, let’s go!”

The dropship circled The Hague’s Division of Scientific Affairs campus before pulling up alongside the end of the roof. Reaper stood waiting, scrubbing uselessly at a large bloodstain on his sleeve with a clawed hand as the bay doors opened. The Talon troops all shuffled aboard, their commander stomping up behind them, the large briefcase in his other hand a worthy prize for their effort. Sombra slowed to a jog as she entered the ship, settling next to the masked man and offering him a familiar red and black data drive.

“Your macguffin, milord.”

He took the drive, no doubt with an eyebrow raised behind his bone-white mask. “All of it?”

Sombra faked a scandalized gasp, not turning to look at Widowmaker as the sniper gracefully jumped into the hold with the bay doors shutting behind her. “Do you doubt me, jefe? I’m hurt!” When her theatrics won no response, she shook her head and settled into her seat and the ship lurched into motion. With a couple of taps across her holoscreen, she pulled up the security feed in time to see Gerte regaining consciousness. “Yeah, I got everything he wanted.”

_Everything, and a little extra_.

* * *

Gerte’s poor head was pounding. What the hell did those people want? And how did they know about her group project? Her knees were weak, so she crawled her way across the cold tile floor over to the computers. Palming her way up to the table, she lifted herself onto her knees with a groan and grabbed the mouse, shaking it to rouse the screen.

Blank desktop. Nothing open--didn’t she open the archive files? What would someone willing to deck a lab technician want with the archive data? Almost everything there was public access, with a few exceptions.

Wait. She had been with someone else-- _Jorgamund_! Gerte’s heart plummeted into her stomach and with clenched teeth she hoisted herself into a standing position and staggered through the rows of desks to the library door. She was merely knocked out--what if her friend had been just as hurt, or worse? Stumbling to a stop against the exit, she thrust her ID onto the datapad and nearly fell through the doorway.

“Jorgamund! Jor--”

Jorgamund looked up at a bruised and distressed Gerte from where he was currently shirtless and thoroughly messy on top of their boss. Ernst, still clothed but equally mussed, fixed his glasses from where they were skewn on his face. Everyone turned a delightful shade of red.

“You have got to be fucking KIDDING ME!”

**Author's Note:**

> -holds Sigma like potato- I just think he's neat.
> 
> Please note that as with all my fics, this sucker is unbeta'd as fuck and probably will end up being combed over multiple times and changed for errors and syntax. Comments, likes, and shares are always deeply appreciated. Come, gather 'round my dumpster fire and warm your inevitably bare feet!


End file.
